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Mexican authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of a former governor for alleged evidence tampering related to the “enforced disappearance” of 43 students in a landmark case dating to 2014.
Angel Aguirre was serving as the governor of Guerrero state at the time of the events considered emblematic of the corruption and impunity feeding Mexico’s disappearance crisis.
The former official gave an “instruction to hide evidence… with the participation of public servants, and high-level state officials,” said General Prosecutor Ernestina Godoy.
“Far from being an isolated act… the cover-up of audios was the result of an intentional operation deliberately structured from the leadership of the state executive power,” she said.
The students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college disappeared on September 26, 2014, while traveling from Guerrero state to a protest in Mexico City.
Local police stopped them in the town of Iguala, where six died in an hours-long street clash and 43 later went missing.
Police have arrested dozens of people, including public officials, over the incident.
The remains of only three students have been found, however, while the whereabouts of the other victims are unknown.
Aguirre, 70, requested a leave of absence in 2014 and left his post before finishing his term, staying out of politics ever since.
One investigation overseen by former president Enrique Pena Nieto‘s government (2012-2018) suggested the students had been incinerated, directing blame towards local authorities and drug traffickers.
Another investigation opened by Pena Nieto’s successor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador considered the events a “state crime.”
That probe suggested a criminal group colluding with local police had attacked the students.
The victims’ parents have accused the Mexican military of complicity in the disappearances for years.
In 2022, authorities arrested three soldiers, including a general, for “actions, omissions or participation” in the crime, while an independent investigative commission accused the military of withholding key evidence in 2023.
The unresolved Ayotzinapa case now looms over the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has said her goal is “truth, justice, and finding the youth.”
